A woman in her thirties barricades herself in an apartment complex. She is armed with a handgun, a couple boxes of ammunition, and an empty prescription vial of pills to "relax her."

A sheriff’s patrol car arrives in response to a call of "shots fired." She barely misses the first officer on the scene, but shoots his marked patrol car twice. The deputy calls on the radio for backup. All civilian residents are evacuated.

Now the place is crawling with cops — all of them diving for cover. A hostage negotiator tries to talk the woman into peaceful surrender. She answers with a volley of gunfire.

By the time the six-hour siege ends, the lady gunslinger has fired 48 shots. Luckily she’s a lousy shot, although she does manage to put bullet holes in five sheriff’s patrol cars and leaves ricochet bullets all over the apartment complex.

How does this thing end? The lady gunslinger is shot in the elbow by a sheriff’s SWAT team sniper. Wounded and unable to operate her weapon, she is subdued without further incident. The lady gunslinger is sentenced to 10 years on multiple counts of "assault with intent to kill."

Justice is served — at least for the moment. After serving 18 months in prison,and some counseling with a shrink, the lady gunslinger is up for parole.

"How could that be?"" cops ask.

"Assault with intent to kill" is not considered a violent crime, state government officials say with a straight face.

"Shooting at cops 48 times is not an act of violence?" scream deputies who’d been on the receiving end of the lady shooter’s gun.

Corrections says that since the woman didn’t actually "hit somebody," it’s not really an act of violence. All she did was "try" to kill cops — albeit she tried nearly 50 times.

After protests from deputies who were at the crime scene when this "act of nonviolence" occurred, corrections people add a note to the woman’s file saying "she may still be considered a risk." Parole is denied — for now! But parole will be coming up again. Better head for cover while you’ve still got a place to hide.